MMTU urges
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, September 17 2024: The Meetei (Meitei) Tribe Union (MMTU) has appealed to all banks and loan recovery agents to stop mounting pressure on loanees to repay loans.

MMTU, in a statement signed by its organisation secretary Takhellambam Parijat, said that the crisis besetting Manipur since May 3, 2023 has seriously affected the economy of Manipur due to myriad reasons and what compounds the misery of the people is the price hike and unavailability of cooking gas and other essential items.

Super fine rice is sold at as high as Rs 58 per kilogram while potato is sold at Rs 40 per kilogram now, the Union said while highlighting how price hike of essential items has affected the lives of the common people.

The Union claimed that the State Government still hasn't submitted a report about the financial loss of the catastrophic floods which hit the State twice and about the hardship being faced by self employed people who took loans from banks to the Centre.

MMTU went on to claim that the Government extending the moratorium period to repay loans is applicable to only a section of capitalists.

Continuing that more than 150 shops at Thangal and Paona Keithel have been closed while many cloth traders at Ima Keithel haven't been selling even a single piece of cloth since the past many months due to the economic stress which the State has been enduring all these months, MMTU asked how the banks expect loanees to repay loans when lives and sources of income of the people have been jeopardised by the unrest in Manipur.

Collecting loans from loanees at this point of time will aggravate the suffering of the people, the Union said and urged the Government to prepare a new economic package for the people whose business or trade has been affected by the protracted crisis.

The Union maintained that banks and loan recovery agents sending notice to loanees to repay loan to prevent seizure of the collateral they kept as security without considering the hardships which the entrepreneurs, traders, shopkeepers etc have been going through is unfortunate.

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